I am an absolute newbie to the field of forensic. I am just begining to work towards a certification the CHFI from EC Council. ANd at the very starting, as I am trying to create images using the IMAGE and Drivespy tools from Digital Intelligence, I get a program terminated error, saying the Image.ini and the Drivespy.ini respectively. Anybody have any idea , how to fix this error.

And secondly what would be the best way to gain more knowledge in this field..where should i start my quest? ANy good sources or links?

I just came from a security seminar and the only totally certified software package that is not disputed in US courst is Encase. Quite a package, and their website has a lot of good information as well.

I've used Encase extensively, and I've been to their training and to training on other tools as well. The tool is far less important than the investigator -- can he testify to the accuracy of the results? Guidance likes to throw around that they're "certified" for the courts, but that's highly misleading: it's just that their validity hasn't been questioned. But it's not true that they're the only valid tools to use; I know for certain that the US Gov't uses a multitude of tools, including but not limited to Encase, and there are lots of 'em out there. Personally, I like http://www.sleuthkit.org/ even more, as long as you know what you're doing.